Category: Information, Intelligence, Knowledge

Today, social media is my primary news source for many areas I’m interested in. That’s not a function of the platforms themselves, but rather of who I’m connected to—experts in particular fields who have ready access to information that would be hard to find anywhere else.

Let me mention three instances on the influence of these people I follow on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sources (blogs):

A lot of books I bought last year, came from mentions in podcasts I like and blogs I read (Tim Ferriss and Maria Papova for instance)

Most of the technical books I read and the webinars I attend come from some of the most influential people I follow on Twitter.

A lot of literature I collect and research for Data Science comes from @kdnuggets and other similar sources

I do have a List called News on Twitter and follow most of the popular news sources in India and US. However, I visit it a lot less and prefer to read from my “Daily” list.

The people I choose to follow are my filters. I read their posts more than I do the “other” reading.

The mobile gaming market in North America continues to grow. As of Q3 2014, there are 141.9MM NA mobile gamers, up from 111.3MM NA mobile gamersin 2013. These mobile gamers spent an average of $32.65 in the last year,generating $4.63B in NA mobile gaming revenue.

The graph below provides a view of how gamers discover games (click on it to get a larger view)

Here are a few fragments from the original post. There is a lot more to read and reflect upon.

On reading:

If you must read in order to acquire knowledge, read critically. Believe nothing till it’s understood, till it’s clearly proven.

On Writing:

To know it — write it! If you’re writing to explain, you’re explaining it to yourself! If you’re writing to inspire, you’re inspiring yourself! If you’re writing to record, you’re recording it on your own memory.

On Learning:

To learn, experiment! Try something new. See what happens. Lindbergh experimented when he flew the Atlantic. Pasteur experimented with bacteria and made cow’s milk safe for the human race. Franklin experimented with a kite and introduced electricity.

On knowledge:

If you would have knowledge, knowledge sure and sound, teach. Teach your children, teach your associates, teach your friends. In the very act of teaching, you will learn far more than your best pupil.

On Reasoning:

Animals have knowledge. But only men can reason. The better you can reason the farther you separate yourself from animals.

I am fascinated by Machine Learning (ML) and keep looking for case studies were ML solves real world problems. This Talk – Machine Learning: The Basics by Ron Bekkerman( video), provides a great overview of machine learning and how it is being used by LinkedIn for Job Analysis. LinkedIn is one of the early companies to jump in to Data Science. With over 200 million subscribers, they have ample data to analyze. The data is very contextual too and that helps build better algorithms (they claim 95% accuracy in prediction in a specific case). At one point in the talk Ron mentions that the ML study helped in building a product that generates about 6 million dollars in revenue for LinkedIn. That is great pay off.

Why is job analysis interesting in general? It provides you with some interesting insights into the direction a specific industry is moving:

If you are in the (IT staffing) industry, you may want to know what kinds of jobs are in demand? And which ones are growing and which ones are shrinking?

If you are an outsourcing company, you may want to analyze the hiring patterns in different parts of the world

What kinds of skills are in demand for startups, medium sized companies and large enterprises? Lots of people from startups to training companies can use this data to build and tailor their offerings.

How do training companies and conference organizers meet the need for skills using job analysis?

Ultimately, it is all Market Intelligence of a kind. It is fascinating that, now we have large data to analyze and get some glimpses into the patterns of demand/supply. So where do you get all this data from? That is a topic for another blog post.

Meta

One of our interns is working on an app to do Job Classification and automatic tagging of jobs. We were debating whether we should use some simple techniques or ML. I was going around looking for case studies and stumbled upon this video.

In a series of studies led by Harvey Lewis, a research director in Deloitte’s Insight Team, the firm has identified five Open Data business “archetypes”:

Suppliers publish their data as Open Data that can be easily used. While they don’t charge for the data—if they did, it wouldn’t be Open Data—they increase customer loyalty and enhance their reputations by releasing it.

Aggregators collect Open Data, analyze it, and charge for their insights or make money from the data in other ways.

Developers “design, build, and sell web-based, tablet, or smart-phone applications” using Open Data as a free resource.

Enrichers are “typically large, established businesses” that use Open Data to “enhance their existing products and services,” for example by using demographic data to understand their customers better.

Enablers charge companies to make it easier for them to use Open Data.

If run any kind of business, this book Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World is worth a read.

Here is a picture from the book that talks about Competitive Environment (with due acknowledgement) an amazingly clear picture that demystifies Competitive Intelligence.

I will provide a brief summary once I finish the book. Sheena demystifies a lot of confusing terms like Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, Competitor Intelligence, Open Source Intelligence and a whole lot of others.

This book provides a compelling argument about why every company should pay attention to competitive intelligence. Sheena provokes a lot of reflection about information, intelligence and a context in which you can think about them. .

I believe that Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law and Gilder’s Law have created an environment where it is finally possible to demonstrate the value of information technology in simple terms rather than by complex inferences and abstract arguments.

I believe that simplicity and convenience are important, and that we have to learn to respect human time.

I believe we need to discuss these things and find ways of getting them right. And I have a fervent hope that through this blog, I can keep the conversations going and learn from them.

I agree – we do need to discuss these things and find ways of getting them right.

Twitter is a great tool of information discovery if you learn to do some of the following:

Follow the right people or topics

Create lists focused on your topics of interest – one list for each topic

Find a way to filter out noise (include duplicates)

Most of my reading material comes from following some of the most informed people around me.

I love the way that Twitter points me to interesting stuff and causes me to Google, think about and research things that I might otherwise have not. I read things that resonate with me and I am almost compelled to follow them up.